Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy • Hacker News Board

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#51

Post by Groxx » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 11:20 PM UTC

akerl_ wrote: post #47

Groxx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need a phone number, nor do I need to upload my contacts' phone numbers[1], in order to use Matrix. [1]: I work around this by running Signal in a work profile with no contacts. So it's... kinda sorta optional, but in practice there are many caveats and complications that make it effectively not. Certainly not when we're claiming it for average users, which is Signal's argument for using it.

I’m not a Matrix user, but it seems like Matrix does in fact handle contact metadata: https://matrix.org/faq/#what-is-an-identity-server%3F I think there’s a difference between what you’re saying, which seems to be that you personally don’t upload your contact metadata to Matrix, and what I asked / the previous commenter was describing, which is the idea that there are messaging platforms which have decided to not su…

You can optionally add your public identifiers to Matrix (phone, email, etc), which lets people search for you via identity providers.

What Signal does is 1) require your phone number, 2) automatically upload every phone number in your contacts, and 3) send a push notification to people on Signal that have uploaded your number in the past that you have joined.

It's a world of difference. And a huge breach of implied trust for multiple people I've known, who joined and immediately uninstalled when they found out a bunch of random people were notified.

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#52

Post by codethief » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 11:24 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #42

olah_1 wrote: post #10

Signal’s recent (not even yet out for many) implementation of mention-only notifications has reinvigorated my investment in them. I am a bit more confident now that usernames will eventually come. But the fact that it’s so slow to change is quite ironic, considering that the whole point is “the ecosystem is moving”. Well apparently it moves like molasses.

What are mention-only notifications?

From https://signal.org/blog/new-groups/ :

> You can now get someone’s attention with @mentions in groups. You can mention anyone in a group message simply by typing “@” and selecting them from the picker. […] And you can configure the group’s notifications in Group Details to only notify you when you’re mentioned.

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#53

Post by ryukafalz » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 11:27 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #41

ryukafalz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When tech nerds nit pick Signal's implementation, they ignore that the unfederated nature of Signal limits the damage these decisions can cause. It limits the damage that some decisions can cause, but exacerbates others. Signal only allows the first-party client to connect to its network; if the developers were legally compelled to add a backdoor into that client, users would have few options. Its security depends…

Compile your own client binary and use that?

You or I can do that, but that's not something the average person is likely to be able to do.

Someone could perhaps distribute their own patched client binary as well, but given Moxie/OWS's views on patched clients, I'd expect them to run into trouble at some point doing that: https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#54

Post by codethief » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 11:27 PM UTC

schoolornot wrote: post #6

3np wrote: post #2

I was vouching for Signal for all my friends for years, supported them with donations, and was really rooting for them. However, I regrettably can't trust in moxie having the best intentions with Signal anymore. Lost count of the number of times this has been recycled on HN so I'm not taking the time to formulate this extremely well but: * For the longest time, requires phone number as identifier. When asked to remov…

I have some concerns around the Signal foundation: The initial $50M in funding was a loan, not a donation, from Brian Acton to the new nonprofit Signal Technology Foundation. By the end of 2018, the loan had increased to $105,000,400, which is due to be repaid on February 28, 2068. The loan is unsecured and at 0% interest.[5] The Foundation is completely controlled by Brian Acton, who is the sole "member" of the nonp…

I think you intended to link the sources but you didn't. Could you still provide them please? I'd be very interested in where those numbers come from.

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#55

Post by storrgie » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 11:28 PM UTC

lrvick wrote: post #46

tptacek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't coherently be alarmed by Signal's use of SGX while at the same time endorsing systems that use no cryptography whatsoever to protect the metadata Signal uses SGX for.

Matrix lets people host their own servers and in doing so put the metadata anywhere they are comfortable. One can have metadata for sensitive internal corporate channels stay on a network they own in whatever country they want while still being able to chat with outside parties on matrix.org or other servers. Several friends host their own servers and more recently matrix p2p is rapidly maturing to dump the need for…

not the _identity_ servers currently though.

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#56

Post by RichardHeart » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 11:30 PM UTC

I applaud the man for trying really, really, hard to make a difference, and succeeding. I look forward to the day when Signal doesn't require a phone number. Telegram, while requiring a phone number doesn't require you to disclose it to receive messages. Others having your phone number opens you to all kind of other attacks, which are quite bad. Sim swapping, and SS7 attacks. SS7 vulns can disclose your real time location and more.

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#57

Post by jhayward » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 11:33 PM UTC

elevation wrote: post #14

It's frustrating to see Signal's reputation undermined in technical circles by the shortsighted zeitgeist. Signal's constitutional emphasis on usability supports user demographics that no other security product can attract. My elderly relatives use Signal now instead of Skype. This drew in other family members who just wanted to video chat with grandma and grandpa. Matrix will never win markets like this. When tech n…

> The Signal group has an uncompromising commitment to user privacy

Would you say that outing people who are signal users and putting them in signal contact lists without their permission is 'uncompromising commitment to user privacy?'

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#58

Post by est31 » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 11:35 PM UTC

ryukafalz wrote: post #50

novok wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal is OSS and you can start your own fork & network if you want to. App publishing platforms not having a good binary signature verification system is the orthogonal issue that you're bringing up, that would in many ways apply to matrix for most users too. Most will never bother to sideload it.

>Signal is OSS and you can start your own fork & network if you want to. Resources and network effects make this a much much less likely endeavor than in federated systems. I can reasonably (and do!) self-host Matrix and XMPP servers for myself and a few friends; I cannot reasonably host a Signal server for everyone I might want to possibly contact via Signal. (And that's setting aside the effort involved in convinci…

Not to mention that in a centralized system only a single entity has to be manipulated to turn over the data, whether it's through court orders, laws, extortion, corruption (as e.g. happened with Skype), or a combination of the above. In a decentralized system, the job of the centralization has to be done by the people who want access to the data in the first place. Have to ring more bells, creates more people who know about the spying. A much harder job and there isn't any "easy" access to almost all data any more.

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#59

Post by bobbyd3 » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 11:38 PM UTC

kemonocode wrote: post #49

elevation wrote: post #14

It's frustrating to see Signal's reputation undermined in technical circles by the shortsighted zeitgeist. Signal's constitutional emphasis on usability supports user demographics that no other security product can attract. My elderly relatives use Signal now instead of Skype. This drew in other family members who just wanted to video chat with grandma and grandpa. Matrix will never win markets like this. When tech n…

> Thanks to Signal's security posture, global protection from weak ciphers, buffer overflows, and even SGX, is just one software update away. Conversely, thanks to Signal's centralized model, implementations of backdoors are also one software update away. By the time the "nerds" find out, it'd probably be far too late and lives could be at stake. It's unfortunately such the nature of the beast that being half-hearted…

reputation and community trust sometimes counts for something? i get it but i also know that if the nerds find out no one would use Signal...

Re: Moxie Marlinspike has a plan to reclaim our privacy

#60

Post by bigiain » Mon, Oct 19, 2020, 11:39 PM UTC

nullc wrote: post #25

bawolff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a reason why signal is relatively mainstream succesful (by crypto product standards) and PGP wasn't. Its because its willing to make tradeoffs in the name of usability (while still emphasizing security). A secure messenger product nobody uses helps nobody's security.

Many of the security design flaws in signal have had little to no direct impact on usability. For example, for years we asked for a simple mechanism which could be used to view a users key and mark it as identified, to prevent MITM -- even one buried in a menu for advanced users (who could at least act as canaries against widespread interception). Not only was the request turned down but usually responded to with vig…

> Many of the security design flaws in signal have had little to no direct impact on usability.

By far the biggest complaint I read about Signal is "It uses phone numbers, and I don't like that". While I agree that I'd prefer to be able to make up my own unique/random identifier, there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that the downside of phone numbers was far far outweighed by the benefits of usability. Most of my friends use Signal, I seriously doubt I'd have been able to help make that come true if the contact discovery features - along with their side channel privacy leaks - didn't work as well as they do. In retrospect, if I were trying to kickstart a global-scale network of secure messenger users - I'd make exactly the same choice today as Moxie did back then.

> users aren't effectively notified that the contacts keys have changed

That's just not true. Its become a running joke amongst my friends that Signal Safety Numbers changing is how we know when people broke or upgraded their phones.